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Evolution rules on fossils

Tas Walker (22(1):6)
reports how belemnite fossils were reckoned concretions when thought by
specialists to occur in the ‘wrong aged’ strata, only to be
recognized as genuine fossils when revised locality information was compatible
with evolutionistic beliefs about the ‘correct’ age of the
strata. This is far from an isolated instance. In my book, Studies
in Flood Geology (2nd Edn, 1999), p. 186, I record multiple such instances.
For over a century, Paleozoic occurrences of belemnites were admittedly
ignored or discounted because of a long-held preconception that belemnites
did not originate until the Triassic.

JOHN WOODMORAPPE,
Illinois, USA.

Intelligent life at NASA?

Isn’t it ironic that we spend billions of dollars pointing radio telescopes all over space in the hopes of finding an intelligent signal, but we cannot even receive our own signal from a probe on Mars?

CHARLES HOBBS,
Idaho, USA.

Ark history

John Eggleston’s suggestion (21(4):5) that Noah’s Ark may no longer exist is not supported by historians. The Jew, Josephus, writing in the first century stated ‘for the ark being saved in that place, its remains are shown there by the inhabitants to this day’. He also quoted Berossus, a Chaldean priest in the third century bc, who wrote that ‘there is still some part of this ship in Armenia at the mountain of the Cordyaens; and that some people carry off pieces of the bitumen, which they take away, and use chiefly as amulets for the averting of mischiefs’. There is no evidence that the Ark was dismantled when it had served its purpose. Moreover there have been numerous reported sightings of the Ark in the last 100 years.

KEN DUNDAS,
New South Wales, Australia.

C this?

I was delighted to ‘c the difference’ in the short article about the speed of light. I was thinking some time ago about how the age of stars is determined, with the speed of light, and it occurred to me that it hasn’t always been the same as it is now. It makes sense that light, as everything else in the universe, was contaminated when sin came. Keep up the great work you’re doing — I know it is making a tremendous difference in many lives.

MEREDITH FALK,
North Carolina, USA.

The notion that c has slowed down became popular among
creationists when it was shown that historical observations may suggest
this (see Creation 12(3):40–41,
1990). However, many creation scientists have become cautious about
supporting this in view of some unresolved theoretical difficulties. For
the present, the cosmology outlined in Dr Russell Humphreys’ book
Starlight
and Time is the front-runner among explanations for the issue of distant
starlight in a young universe. N.B. a decline in the value of c would
not necessarily mean a decay process linked to the Fall.

Hen-hunting horse

Re: the chicken-eating sheep (21(4):9). A few years ago some vacationing friends spent the day at my home. They left some pork baloney in my refrigerator which went bad so I threw it out to my cats. To my horrified amazement, our two ewes quickly ate the spoiled pork!

A few days ago I related my story and the one in your magazine to a friend. This came as no surprise to him. He said he knew of a friend’s horse that would chase down chickens and eat them whole, tearing them apart using his feet and teeth!

Does this mean that, as all animals were meant to eat vegetation originally, they can all turn carnivorous as well?

JOE TAYLOR,
Texas, USA.

See also ‘The
lion that wouldn't eat meat’ article this issue — Ed.

Mobile humans

Having read with interest the article ‘Electrical Design in the Human Body’ (22(1):43–45) about the nervous system, I was intrigued to open my newspaper (The Daily Telegraph — England, 7 December, 1999) to find a full figure of the human nervous system being used in an advertisement with the caption ‘Only one other mobile network transfers more data than ours.’

RAY POOLEY,
Surrey, U.K.

Kamikaze Kow

The most responses to last issue concerned the guest editorial on the evolutionary basis of the Holocaust, followed by the article about dealing with those who insist on ‘leaving the Bible out of’ the origins debate.

Alex Jewett of Geelong, Australia wrote that he had initial difficulty with our children’s story illustrating the limits of science through the ‘boat sunk by a cow’ — until he found an apparent confirmation of the story in an aviation safety journal (Flight Safety Australia, Vol. 3(4), July–August, 1999).

Apparently Japanese authorities did not believe the crew of one of their trawlers that a cow, ‘falling out of a clear blue sky’, had sunk their vessel. The sailors were released from prison when the Russian Air Force admitted that the crew of one of its cargo planes had taken off with a cow they found wandering near a Siberian airfield. It began to rampage at 30,000 feet above the Sea of Japan, so to save the aircraft, they shoved the animal out of the cargo hold. As Alex wrote, ‘Truth is stranger than fiction’.

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